5/06/2016

Friday Reacharound: Medicaid Expansion Is Gonna Help a Shitload of People in Louisiana (and Save Money)

Dealing with a crushing budget crisis because of the incompetent fuckery of ex-governor Bobby Jindal and his Republican lackeys in the legislature, Louisiana's current governor, a Democrat, John Bel Edwards, has still been able to do some good for his state by simply doing one thing: accepting the expansion of Medicaid offered under the Affordable Care Act. With that one executive action, Edwards has turned a total apocalypse into a mere scorched-earth hellscape.

For instance, up in Monroe, one of the most shitkicker towns you'll ever visit (Duck Dynasty territory), Edwards spoke about how Medicaid expansion saved the safety net hospital there. Yeah, four other such hospitals are slated for closure, but University Health Conway was able to avoid that fate because the state is saving $184 million just by putting the burden for caring for more poor citizens on the federal government's tab.

And Louisiana is going to be the first state to use info from food stamp applications to fast-track people onto Medicaid. Officials expect 375,000 more people to be covered by Medicaid, or "Healthy Louisiana," as it will be known in the state. That's about 8% of the state's population having access to regular health care who previously didn't. If you add that to the 1.4 million Louisianians already on Medicaid, that's about a third of the population. If you add that to the nearly 800,000 who are on Medicare, and you've got over half the state reliant on the government for health insurance.

Let's say that again: Over half the residents of Louisiana, one of the most conservative states in the nation, will get their health insurance from the federal government (or the state government, although it's paid for by grants from the feds). In other words, words of idiots, the majority in Louisiana is a bunch of takers who, governor aside (remember: Edwards won only because whoremonger David Vitter was his opponent), will keep voting in Republicans because they don't want a bunch of no-account takers mooching off them.

But that's what we Democrats are damned to do, no? We must keep helping those who are too blind to see that they're getting help.